With Your Shield, Or On It
by Vivian Bloodmark
Summary: SEQUEL to "Byronic." As Gibbs works unde the radar to protect Mike Franks, Abby tries to sort out if and where she fits into Gibbs' troubled and extensive set of broken families. Rated for some sexuality.
1. Underwhelmed

**With Your Shield, or On It**

**By Vivian Bloodmark**

**Author's note:**

**I have a very bad feeling about this M. Alison Hart chick, and the effect she might have on Gibbs. She's about as unappealing as most of his previous love interests, which is not encouraging. I'm worried she won't leave the series soon enough for my tastes. For the sake of making these fics fit properly into the potentially problematic future canon, let's establish that all of the stories in this series take place AFTER Gibbs gets over and gets rid of Alison. So, they take place some time after season 7. **

**That takes care of that. On to story number 3!**

**All my love,**

**Vivian**

**Chapter One - Underwhelmed**

Monday morning was about as anticlimactic as could possibly have been. Abby went in early, to make sure that she got to her office before anybody else had a chance to get to theirs. Her theory was that if she came in early and didn't have to walk by Ziva and Tony, she wouldn't trigger their memories of any questions they wanted to ask her or jokes they wanted to make at her expense. She was glad to avoid McGee for totally different, and decidedly guiltier reasons. From him, there wasn't anything she had to hide…except for her own embarrassment at having involved him in making a choice that went against his own good.

Director Vance would certainly want to talk to her, and maybe if he didn't have a chance to see her and Gibbs together, it wouldn't occur to him that any of the rumors circulating through NCIS had a grain of truth in them. After all, he hadn't bothered to look into any of the allegations made against Julie from legal and her unfortunately and inappropriately voracious sexual appetite.

The hours ticked by uneventfully, but Abby was still fidgety. Every time she thought she heard the elevator, she jumped up and spun around to see, only to discover that the noise had been a figment of her imagination, or had actually been one of the various beeping noises made by her well-loved technology. The fact that she was confusing the communicative noises of her computer for the totally dissimilar dinging of the elevator proved that she wasn't very focused. Everyone continued to stay out of her way, and she had no excuses to make for herself.

By the time 3 o'clock rolled around, Abby was started to get a bit resentful. Why, exactly, was it that nobody was interested in how she'd spent her weekend? Why was nobody asking questions? After all, McGee had certainly made them all aware that he and Abby had not gone on that date after all, and the look on Gibbs' face when he came into work…

Then again, realized Abby, maybe Gibbs hadn't looked any different when he'd come into work. The idea of him being stoically silent in the face of the passionately romantic interlude they'd had, even if only briefly, at Ducky's home, was a little bit sickening. She was all giddy about it, and she was delighted to be giddy. How could Gibbs be so closed-lipped?

When the elevator arrived a few minutes later, Abby didn't even look up. She had so firmly decided that it was all in her head that, when a hand came down on her shoulder, she shrieked and spun around in her chair to find Gibbs standing just behind her. She hadn't seen him since Friday, and the anticipation of getting the chance to see him again was probably the factor that was making him look so very attractive to her at that moment. Abby could recognize anew the intense masculinity in his presence, the layers of expression and placidity in his eyes and the way he relaxed his features and his posture just a little bit in her presence, enough to indicate the comfort he felt more around her than around anyone else. He'd probably always exhibited those things, she thought. It was only now, when she looked at him with an eye for and an interest in the most flattering details, that she picked up on those little things that spoke to her about Gibbs as a man, rather than Gibbs as an agent.

"Hey," she said, the words coming out more quietly and a little more hesitantly than she'd expected them to. Gibbs nodded at her, gave her shoulder a quick squeeze, and asked, in his man-on-a-mission voice, "Got a minute, Abs? Just got back from picking up a dead marine. Ducky could use some help."

"Oh." Abby bit her lip. Somehow, she hadn't expected those to the first words out of his mouth upon seeing her again. "Um, sure. Do…do we have a name?"

Gibbs shook his head. "Not yet. Ducky's got a watch and a a pair of boots that you can start getting prints off of. Call me when you know."

He turned and started to leave, but stopped halfway to the doorway and raised an eyebrow at her when he saw that she hadn't gotten up to follow him "Well? The sooner the better, Abs, we don't have all day."

"Right, I'm on it." Abby hopped out of her chair and went over to join Gibbs at the elevator. While waiting for it to arrive, she asked, "So…how was your weekend?"

"Same as always." Gibbs shrugged. "You know how it goes."

"No." Abby shook her head. "Actually, I…really don't know how it goes. The secret life of Special Agent Gibbs has always been a tantalizing mystery." She smiled, trying to make sure that he knew that she was teasing him, and Gibbs couldn't help but smile back, even if he did direct that answering smile at the floor, rather than at Abby herself.

"I don't live a very exciting life," he tried to say, but Abby shook her head vigorously. Reaching over, she pressed the button to stop the elevator, and the lights shut off as it ground to a halt.

"Not exciting?" she asked indignantly. "What about being a field agent solving murder mysteries and hunting down bad guy is 'not exciting,' exactly? Besides, you get to spend your time with the most incredibly awesome people…like Ziva! And McGee! That's totally more exciting than anybody else's day job."

"Okay." Gibbs was being patient. "That's my day job. My weekends are pretty slow."

"Great." Abby thought she was going to sidle seductively over to his side of the elevator, but stopped herself at the last second, intimidated by the no-nonsense, disinterested look on his face. "Then, if you're not busy, maybe I could…come over this weekend. We could get dinner. We could, uh…work on your boat. I've already taken a boat of yours apart, once, maybe this time I can put it back together. Sounds like a fun challenge. I love challenges!"

"I can't, Abs. Not this weekend." Abby thought that Gibbs looked legitimately apologetic. "Got houseguests coming on Saturday. Mike Franks and his family were looking for a place to stay while they're in the area."

"And you're really a big enough softie to let them crash at your place, even though you don't have a guest room," said Abby, getting that warm and fuzzy feeling as she considered the last time she'd seen Gibbs around his goddaughter. He was really wonderful with children, and seemed almost to turn into a different person when he got to play with kids. "I'd love to see them. I'll come and say hello. It's been ages since Franks has been back from Mexico. I have to tell him about Sister Rosita's big success last week, he's always asking me about-!"

"Not this time, Abs." Now less apologetic, Gibbs was being firm. The look on his face said very clearly that he was done with the conversation, and Abby decided to let the matter go. Gibbs started the elevator again, and as it rose to its destination, Abby stared ahead of her at the closed doors, avoiding her boss' eyes. When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, Gibbs paused before stepping out, and, reaching over to put an arm around Abby's waist, turned her gently around and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "I'll call you," he told her.

Watching him walk away, Abby couldn't decide whether or not to be frustrated. After all, it was the first time they'd been back to work together since Ducky's, and she really ought to cut him some slack for being careful to continue acting like her boss.

Then again, he wasn't just acting like her boss, he really was her boss. That morning, she'd been terrified that he might be put in a position where he could no longer be her boss, and that he'd be asked to leave in order to avoid complications. Now it seemed to her like there was very little likelihood of Gibbs letting his personal relationships get in the way of his workplace relationships…even if they did involve the same people.

It was clearly her job to make sure that the personal relationships stayed on track. It would only be a quick visit, she decided, but it wasn't fair for him to totally deny her the opportunity. Franks would, at any rate, be happy to see her, It would be refreshingly wonderful to tell someone all about what was going on between the two of them, both for herself, and maybe even for Gibbs. Abby knew Franks liked her, and he'd be delighted to hear that his former partner was…involved. In the meantime, she would work on sorting out exactly how "involved" she really was.


	2. Under Fire

**Chapter Two – Under Fire**

When she left work that Monday, Abby had the determined air of a woman who had made up her mind as to a good course of action. She was going to bide her time until the weekend, and then she would show Leroy Jethro Gibbs the best date night of his entire life. She would bring dinner, some of her dad's old power tools for the boat, and some romantic mood lighting for…

The trouble was, every time Abby got to the part of the evening that came after the dinner and the boat building, something in her stomach started turning funny circles, and she could feel the heat rising in her face, till it got to the point that panic started to negate the effects of the turn-on. It wasn't that she was an inexperienced lover, just that the idea of being…_intimate_ with Gibbs, imposing and consistently no-nonsense as he so often was, ended up being mind boggling even for a professional puzzle solver. When she discovered that envisioning him without his clothes on created an even more powerful physical and emotional reaction, she decided to focus permanently on something else.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for her, there was a lot to think about. Gibbs' irrationally normal behavior continued consistently throughout the rest of the week, so that Abby herself began to wonder if anything really had happened between them, or if the whole thing had been a remarkably glorious dream. True, Gibbs was certainly not cruel to her, nor was he avoiding her as he had done in the weeks prior to their reconciliation. Instead, he was acting as though their situation had returned to a perfect status quo, him as superior, her as favored underling, the two of them playing out their totally unemotional roles as professional, disinterested crime fighters. Tony and Ziva were still completely in the dark, although she had almost, on at least three separate occasions, blurted the secret out to them in the middle of the hallway, just to see what they would say.

Consciously, Abby knew that Gibbs would not and was not toying with her. Unconsciously, she felt stupid, like the time she'd given her answers away to the cute boy in math class, only to find out that the interest he'd shown in her was purely academic. The situation was hardly similar, but the feelings were remarkably so. Amazing, she thought, how romance doesn't let you grow up.

All week, she looked forward to that weekend, a weekend when she knew that everything would get sorted out, and when she would finally get to encounter Gibbs as the man he'd been on Friday night at Ducky's, unprofessional, passionate, demonstrative. At eight o'clock on Saturday night, after having waited all day for what she hoped was the perfect moment, Abby finally showed up at Gibbs' door with her Thai takeout boxes and her little bag of mood lighting.

The door, as always, was unlocked, and when she knocked on the outside, there was no response. Figuring Gibbs and Franks might be in the basement, Abby pushed the door open and took a few steps into the room. She only had time and room enough for a few steps.

Almost as soon as she'd gotten through the door, Abby heard a sharp, familiar voice shouting "FREEZE! NCIS!" She looked up to find the barrel of a gun leveled at her head, and, with a frantic shriek, she dropped her bags so that all of the food and the romance spilled out onto the carpet. Then, as the panic passed, she was able to focus enough to identify Ziva as the gunman. By the time Abby had managed to meet her eyes, Ziva was already lowering the gun, a very startled look plastered all over her beautiful face. "Abby? What…what are you doing here so late?"

Ziva backed up to let Abby get a little bit farther into the room, where she found Tony standing, also with lowered gun in hand, looking stupidly at her from just behind the door.

"I…" Abby seemed to be having trouble getting her voice to stop shaking. "I came to see Gibbs…I heard that Franks was visiting, and I thought I'd bring dinner…" she trailed off as she remembered the dinner, which was now in an inedible heap on Gibbs' floor.

The situation was now, of course, extremely clear. Franks obviously wasn't just visiting, and Gibbs was having nothing close to a weekend house party. This was some sort of protective operation, and Abby had walked right into the middle of a makeshift safe house. But why hadn't she and McGee known about this? Or, continued Abby's rapid thought process, was McGee in on it, leaving only herself out of the loop?

"I'm sorry, Abby." Ziva really did sound sorry. "Gibbs and Franks are in the basement. Tony, why don't you go tell them-?"

She cut herself off when she turned around to gesture at the basement door, only to find Gibbs standing at the top of the stairs, his arms crossed over his chest, eyes blazing at Abby, who suddenly felt very small and very vulnerable.

"Ziva, DiNozzo." Gibbs was being curt. "Stay here, keep your eye on the doors. Make sure the three of them stay downstairs."

"Sure thing, boss." Tony was avoiding Gibbs' eyes. "Where are you gonna be?"

"Upstairs," said Gibbs. "Abby and I have to talk."

***

"I'm sorry, Gibbs," Abby was saying, once the two of them had mounted the stairs and were standing on the landing, just out of earshot of the rest of the team. "I didn't know…there was no way that I would have barged in like this if I had any idea…"

Gibbs glared at her, the way she'd seen him glare at only a few other people in the course of her time at NCIS. It was a blank glare, the kind of cold, totally uncompassionate glare that he reserved for those who had committed particularly heinous personal transgressions. She wanted to melt, or turn into someone or something else. She wanted to shrivel up right there and die. "You have no business being here," he said. "I told you, very clearly, that you were not welcome here this weekend. I thought that we were clear."

"We're clear," whispered Abby. "We're sure clear now. I just thought…" Abby knew it didn't matter what it was that she had thought. She had disobeyed what had essentially been a direct order. "I'm sorry."

Gibbs threw the door open to his bedroom, and as he and Abby crossed into it, she thought about all the circumstances in which she had thought to find herself alone with him in there. This was definitely not one of them. In silence, he walked over to the window, running one hand through his hair in a frustrated, unconsciously uncomfortable gesture. Abby watched him, chewing her lip, until he turned around and faced her again. When he finally met her gaze, his expression had changed from a fierce, cold one to one of beleaguered discontent. "You're shivering," he muttered.

"Yeah." Abby looked down at her arm to see that there were goose bumps still standing out on her skin. "Yeah, I just had a gun pointed at my face. By Ziva, which is, like, a hundred times scarier than having anyone else point a gun at your face. Except maybe you. Not that you'd need a gun…you can kill with a look."

Reaching over on to the bed, Gibbs pulled off a thin blanket, and tossed it at Abby. She ignored it and let it fall to the floor where she stood. "Put that around you," Gibbs insisted. "It'll warm you up."

Abby stared at him, then bit her lip. "I'm not cold, Gibbs. I'm scared. I'm freaked out. I need someone to hold me and tell me it's okay. Haven't you ever needed that? Someone to be close to you? Maybe when you were a kid?"

"Maybe," Gibbs muttered. For a moment, it looked as though he was going to stay on the other side of the room, watching her until she broke, as though she were one of the victims of his famous interrogations. Eventually, however, he did walk over and put his arms around her, letting her snuggle in against his chest, but otherwise remaining rigid and stern. Abby curled her fingers around his forearm, closed her eyes, and tried to pretend he was smiling at her. He had a great smile, especially when it was spontaneous, and just for her, the way it had sometimes been when she'd caught him off guard with a cute joke in the lab.

"It can't be like this, Abby," Gibbs said in a low voice, slowly rubbing his hand comfortingly over her back and shoulders. Abby waited for a follow up remark, but when he didn't say anything, she raised her head enough to look him the eye.

"What can't be like what?" she asked.

**Author's note: Sorry for the cliffhanger. Stay tuned for this encounter to make more sense!**


	3. Under the Radar

**Chapter Three – Under the Radar**

Gibbs took a minute, apparently figuring out how to phrase his answer. "We can't act like nothing's changed," he said finally.

That was not the response that Abby had expected. She didn't know what she'd expected, but considering the way he'd been treating her for the last week, she certainly hadn't thought that he'd be the one to remind her of their new circumstances. "I know," she said. "I know things are different, I'm glad that things are different, I just wanted to-!"  
"Listen." Gibbs cut her off, shaking his head. The edge had gone out of his voice, but not out of his eyes. "When I tell you to stay away, you stay away. When I say something is off limits, it's off limits. No questions."

"That," muttered Abby, "is no different from the way it was before."

"The difference," insisted Gibbs, "is that I will not have you in the line of fire."

Abby stepped back, unfolding herself from his arms, and watched him for a moment, narrowing her eyes at him, trying to figure out just how sincere that comment was. "That's what this is all about?" she asked, when it was apparent that he wasn't going to elaborate on his remonstrance. "You're keeping me out of trouble? Me? I don't have to tell you how many times I've been in trouble, Gibbs, because I think you know, and Ziva knows, and Tony and McGee know. I'm-!"

"-not a trained field agent." Gibbs was firm.

"Okay." Abby tried to stay patient. "So getting shot up may not actually be in my job description. Doesn't change the fact that it's happened before, and it'll happen again. That's what you go in for when your best friends and co-workers are getting threatened and put in danger almost every day of their lives. This isn't new, Gibbs, we've all dealt with this before. Lots of times before."

"You weren't listening. Things are different than they were before. You and I are different."

So that was it. Abby knew that she should have anticipated Gibbs being particularly overprotective when it came to her, especially after the way he'd looked at her, the way he'd held her that night, as though keeping her close to him was the only thing that mattered in that moment. Yet she couldn't help feeling that Gibbs' argument was stupid, even melodramatic. She may not have been a trained field agent, but she had been trained, over time and through several instances of frighteningly real-time practice, to expect that something awful might happen at any moment. She'd been hunted by crazed, obsessive gunmen, and she'd been targeted as the scapegoat of chemical warfare operations. Abby was not a sheltered little girl.

And yet, when she thought hard about it, she couldn't think of any situation in which Gibbs' hadn't come in, her knight in shining armor, to save the day and pull her out of the jaws of sudden death. That was the key, she knew. Gibbs would no longer be able to handle Abby's safety in the calm, effectively disinterested way he once had. The dynamic had changed, and with it, so had his ability to detach.

"What if you had walked in here and gotten caught in a hostage situation?" Gibbs was asking here. "What would we have done?"

Abby shrugged. "At least I would have been here. You know. With you."

The firmness of the lines of Gibbs' face said that he didn't care for that response. Not for the first time, she considered the fact that Gibbs' managed to be incredibly self-centered when it came to how caring and loyal he was. He didn't seem to have even thought about how Abby might feel if the tables were turned, knowing that Gibbs, not to mention Tony and Ziva were caught in a dangerous situation about which she could do nothing.

"With me wouldn't make you any safer."

"That's not the point!" Abby was getting angry. That anger was probably what made her forget about the things she wasn't supposed to say, and wouldn't even have consciously wanted to say, if she'd been under control. "How did you handle it when Director Sheppard worked cases? She was a field agent once, wasn't she? And she let herself get out of hand, and in the way of field work all the time. And you loved her."

The silence in the room didn't need to be broken for Abby to know that not only had she crossed the line, but she'd been acting like an idiot. Director Sheppard had been a field agent once, and she'd been a meddler. She'd also been a perfect example of what happened when someone Gibbs' cared about got in the way.

"Yeah," said Gibbs, his voice coming out harshly enough to startle Abby out of her self-reproach. "I loved her. And she wasn't the first."

Abby wondered, not the first of what? The first he had loved, the first casualty, or both?

***

When she descended into the living room again, Tony and Ziva were sitting on the couch. They stood up as soon as they heard her footsteps on the stairs. "Abby?" Ziva looked worried. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," said Tony, "we were afraid the boss was taking you up there to find a good place to get rid of the remains. He looked like murder when he saw you come in."

"Still in one piece," Abby said, trying to produce a smile. "Gibbs says I can't leave the house, though."

Ziva nodded. "We think they might be watching the house," she said, gesturing in the direction of the front door. "Waiting for one of us to come out. It is encouraging that you managed to get in. Perhaps Gibbs is being…over cautious."

"Or," added Tony, frowning, "maybe they let Abby in hoping that she'd bring somebody else out with her when she left."

"Wait." The situation was beginning to get just a little bit clearer to Abby. "Who are 'they?' I mean, the 'they' that might be watching the house?"

Tony and Ziva exchanged a frustrated look. "We don't know," said Ziva. "We haven't been able to see them."

"They could be outside the house," muttered Tony, "or they could be lying on the beach in Mexico, cutting and pasting more colorful death threats. The boss is taking 'precautions.'"

"Death threats for Franks?" So, thought Abby, no wonder he'd dropped in so suddenly.

Tony was shaking his head. "Nah," he said. "Death threats for Amira."

Abby took in a quick breath. That changed things. If Gibbs was feeling especially protective and especially ill at ease today, Abby thought she suddenly knew why. Daughters were very soft spots for Gibbs, and losing one was an unthinkable nightmare. He was on edge because someone was threatening his family…the family he and Mike Franks' had only recently managed to create out of the remnants of somebody else's.

"I want to talk to Franks," said Abby, abruptly becoming decisive. Tony gestured at the open doorway that led to the basement stairs.

"Down there," he told her.


	4. Underground

**Chapter Four – Underground**

In the basement, Franks was standing over by Gibbs' boat, running his eye over the wood work with an appraising sort of look on his face. Seated nearby on the workbench, was Leyla, Franks' gorgeous Iraqi daughter-in-law, her arms folded delicately around her daughter, Amira, who looked up curiously when Abby started down the stairs towards them.

"I've been waitin' for you to come say hello," said Franks, not looking up. "Thought maybe you'd decided you didn't love me anymore."

Abby ran over to him and gave him a hug, which got a big, pleased smile out of the battle-scarred former marine. Franks was always gratifyingly happy to see Abby, and at the moment, when she was still feeling psychologically beaten by the man she idolized, seeing Franks' smile gave her a few moments of warm, fuzzy relief. Unlike Gibbs, Mike Franks tended to wear his emotions on his sleeve, which was refreshing, unless he was in a bad mood.

"Heard ya come in," he was saying. "Made quite a fuss up there. That Ziva of yours has a pair of lungs on her, though I guess she shouted at ya cause she wanted to warn me we had company. Amira started to bawl, though that all hell was about to break loose. Don't tell Ziva that, though. I think she really likes kids."

"I'm sorry." Abby looked over at Amira, who was occupying herself by playing with a woodchip. "You all must be bored to tears down here. Hi Amira!" Crossing over to the little girl, Abby crouched down in front of her and reached out to gently shake Amira's tiny hand. The child giggled. "I've heard so much about you, but I don't think I've ever met you before! I'm Abby." After exchanging a slightly more mature greeting with Leyla, Abby turned around to find Franks staring at her, a disappointed, knowing look on his face.

"He really took it out of ya, didn't he?" he asked, his eyes on Abby's face. She tried not to look too broken up, but Franks shook his head at her, waving her stoicism away with one hand. "Don't bother lookin' noble, I've known your boss for way longer than any of you have, and he can be a real bastard when he's got a mind to be."

"Gibbs is a great man," Abby started.

Franks didn't let her finish. "He's just treatin' you like a piece of shit, that's all. Yeah, I know how he justifies it, and I don't blame him for bein' protective, but Probie's never been so great at showin' his love without a gun. Four wives, and he still can't romance a girl properly. Or maybe you've already noticed that."

"He…told you? About us?" Abby wasn't sure why she was surprised. Franks was grinning at her now, with a combination of lecherous approval and genuine pleasure in his smile that made her wonder exactly how that conversation had gone. "You're lucky. With me, he mostly pretends that nothing even happened."

"Not just now he didn't." Franks was suddenly serious again. Abby's chagrin must have shown on her face, because Franks sighed, shook his head, and clapped her on the shoulder with one hand, looking sickeningly sympathetic. "You made your own bed, darlin', now you gotta sleep in it. Won't believe if you tell me you thought this was gonna be easy. You gotta want him even though he's messed up, cause you ain't gonna get him any other way. Shannon's always gonna be lookin' over his shoulder, telling him to keep an eye on you so that you don't turn into every other woman he's been unfortunate enough to fall for. Jenny, too. If you're ready to have him, you better be ready to have them too, and all the time. Some things, time don't heal."

"I want to be _the_ woman in his life." Abby murmured, not sure if she was reassuring herself, or telling Franks. "Holding on to them won't really teach him anything, it'll just…hurt. It does just hurt. It's not making him any stronger, or wiser, or more prepared. I'm gonna change things for him…he's gonna be really, finally happy. I want to be _that_ girl."

Franks shrugged. "There've been a few. There's a club, and now you're a member. Being last in line can be a tough break."

Franks sat down on the bench, taking Amira on to his lap as he engaged Leyla in conversation. Abby thought about whether or not she could handle being Gibbs' girl. She hadn't counted on being a manifestation of all the other ones that got away. Abby had never, not once in her life before now, had trouble establishing herself as an individual. Most of the time, people thought she was a freak, too far away from everybody else to be considered part of the mainstream. She'd become an expert at displaying her originality. Wanting Gibbs was opening up all sorts of unfamiliar experiences to her…and she didn't think she was at all okay with this one.

"Chin up," said Franks. "Should be flattered. He's crazy about you, wouldn't rank you with the ones that got away if he wasn't."

Abby's heart had sunk into her boots. Seeing her face, Franks must have guessed that he hadn't cheered her up much. "Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, well. Can't say I didn't try."

***

Sometime later, just when Abby was starting to feel like finding somewhere to curl up and sleep, Gibbs came down to the basement to join them. Glancing at Abby, he murmured. "I have to talk to Mike for a minute."

"Right." Abby stood up from the workbench and headed for the landing. When Gibbs saw the basement door close behind her, he looked over at Franks, who was giving him a pitying, unimpressed sort of look.

"What?" Gibbs asked, raising an eyebrow.

Franks shook his head. "Just wondering if you're ever gonna get your head out of your ass, Probie. That there is one of the sweetest little girls I ever did see, and I'm not just talking about her figure."

"Knock it off, Mike." Gibbs wasn't impressed. "Quit checking out my team members, and don't use that kind of language in front of my goddaughter."

"She's my granddaughter," said Franks, somewhat indignant. "Wouldn't be your goddaughter if it weren't for me. I think somebody's having a problem separatin' himself from bein' in charge…sound right to you?"

"I'm here to talk about the death threats. I need you to-!"

"I've talked about the death threats. I've said the same thing four or five times, now. Either your memory's goin', which I doubt, or you're stallin' to keep me from asking you what it is you're trying to accomplish by breaking the heart of that pretty little girl. And don't tell me it's none of my business, cause we both know that this got nothing to do with business. This is pleasure, and you're wastin' it." Franks stopped, eyeing Gibbs in silence for a second. Finally, he said, "just because we're cooped down here watching the hours go by doesn't mean you gotta be. Go up there and make it up to her."

Gibbs wanted nothing more at that moment than to be upstairs with Abby, showing her, rather than telling her exactly how glad he would have been, on any other day, under any other circumstances, to have her over for dinner. He would have cleaned up, cleared off the couch by the old television set, made her a drink and made her comfortable while he ordered out. Somewhere deep down inside him, entirely obscured from even his own conscious mind, Gibbs was a gentleman, the way his father had so carefully raised him to be, and he would have paid for everything, would have enjoyed delighting her with the little romantic things that no one, especially Abby, would have expected him to think of. If the situation had been different, it would have been his move, his idea, her pleasure. Now, however, was no time for romance, and keeping her happy meant keeping her out of the house, out of the loop, and out of the way. What he wanted wasn't important. Priorities intervened. Franks, he thought, ought to know that, maybe even better than he did himself.

"Not now," he said. "We're busy."

"You've got two very competent people with some big-ass guns upstairs guarding the door," Franks was saying. "If anything goes wrong, we'll holler. Go up there and tell Abby she's gotta stay."

"She knows that she can't leave," muttered Gibbs.

"And that's a big part of the problem." Franks was adamant. "You gotta make her feel like she's staying not because it's dangerous out there, but because you want her in here." When Gibbs didn't' move, Franks gave him a none-too- gentle shove, adding, "go on, go get her."


	5. Underwear

**Chapter Five – Underwear**

When Gibbs left the basement, he found Tony and Ziva talking in hushed voices next to the door. As soon as they saw him, they moved away from each other, looking guilty. Gibbs ignored them. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn't. At least it would give them something to talk about when they got bored with all the standing around.

Abby was sitting on the edge of Gibbs' bed, clenching a piece of the coverlet in her fingers, staring off absently into space. She didn't look unhappy, just thoughtful, and Gibbs took a deep breath, thinking to start the conversation off on a good, non-threatening note.

"Hi, Abs," he said.

She looked up. "Hi, Gibbs. Want me to…get off your bed?"

"Nope." He went and sat down next to her. "It's as good a place to sit as any."

"Oh, good." Abby dropped the covers, clasping her hands together in her lap. "Cause," she added, in a voice which seemed to be straining against exasperation, "there really aren't a lot of other places for me to go. Can't be downstairs with Ziva and Tony, cause they're working, and I can't be in the basement, cause you've got something important to say to Franks. Can't leave the house, cause I might get shot. Guess I'm stuck in your bedroom after all. Almost starting to look like you planned it this way."

Abby sounded sarcastic, passive aggressive, like she was looking for a fight. Gibbs just shrugged at her. "What if I did?" he asked.

That definitely made her do a double take. She peered into his face for a moment, mouth open in surprise, and then caught the mischievous twinkle in the corner of Gibbs' eyes. It didn't make her smile. Instead, she dropped her eyes back to her hands, looking irritated and peevish. "You can't pull that one now, Gibbs. You can't suddenly get all cute and flirty, you can't switch gears that quickly. It's not right. It…it makes my brain ache. And I need that brain, you need it so that I can solve puzzles, because that's what you want me for, solving puzzles, and evidence. Not that I don't like evidence, and puzzles, cause that's…that's my favorite kind of stuff, but sometimes it's just nice to-!"

"How come you don't call me Jethro?" asked Gibbs quietly, stopping her mid-ramble.

Abby stared at him. "Nobody calls you that. I mean, only Ducky calls you that, and he's known you since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Why would I call you that?"

He shrugged. "It's my name."

"Yeah…" Abby seemed to be having a hard time choosing the right words. "Of course I know that, but…you've always been Gibbs. The fearless hero doesn't go by his first name. First names aren't intimidating, they aren't impressive. You're impressive. It's a mark of respect."

"Well," said Gibbs, "guess I'm not the only one having trouble making something new out of something old."

Abby thought about that for a moment, returning her gaze to the fixed space on the wall that she'd been gazing at when Gibbs had walked into the bedroom. "It's comforting," she said, after a moment's consideration, "when things don't' change, especially when they were good, before. Even if the new things are better, it's still…"

"Scary," agreed Gibbs. "Yeah. I know."

The silence between them seemed to relax a bit, as Abby mulled over the idea of Gibbs finding anything scary. Her reverie gave him the chance to watch the mobile, expressiveness of her face, to see the changes taking place as she tried, as Abby often did, to soar through the mental process to quickly, leaving her confused and forced to backtrack. He recalled reading once, in a classic detective novel that had no similarity, in any way, to real police work, that Sherlock Holmes had claimed to be able to read a man's thoughts in his features. Most of the time, Gibbs thought that was a bunch of crap, but with Abby, it could be done. She was an open book. He wondered why it had taken him so long to be able to read her. Maybe he hadn't been going about it the right way, or maybe he hadn't really been trying at all.

"Did Franks send you up here?" Abby asked finally. Gibbs chuckled.

"Not exactly," he told her, reaching out to take one of her hands in his and giving it a quick squeeze. "He didn't exactly send me. Wouldn't say he's against the idea, though." After a pause, he added, "Kinda puts me in a tough spot. You know how I feel about apologies, but…can't really think of what else to say. Maybe you'd better start."

"Okay," said Abby, in what was almost a whisper. "Okay, here goes."

She didn't say anything, at least, not with her mouth. What she did do with her mouth was to place it delicately on to Gibb's cheek, then on to his lips, moving her lips over his in a slow, tense, hesitant way that made something tingle all the way down his spine. He reached out and held her at the waist, kissing her more intensely, more passionately, until he realized he had almost crushed her body against his with the force of his increasingly powerful embrace. She wasn't a fragile girl, but she felt more delicate than he'd expected, and he placed a kiss on the side of her neck as slowly released her, letting her body relax back, hearing the harshness of her breath start to subdue itself into more regular inhalations.

"If you let go now, and start saying you don't' want to hurt me, or something," she murmured behind a nervous little laugh, "I will never forgive you, apology or no apology." There was nothing, Gibbs thought, for her to worry about. He couldn't have walked away even if he'd tried.

Being the gentleman, he undressed her first, calloused fingers trying not to scrape against her skin as he drew off her long-sleeved shirt and slid her skirt carefully down around her ankles. It took him only two tries to unhook her bra. While he was tossing it on the bedside floor, he heard Abby say, the laughter still in her voice, "Masterful work. I love a man with experience working with his hands." It came out dirtier than she meant it, and she blushed, then grinned. Gibbs applied himself to her underwear.

When Abby's turn came, she pulled his shirt over his head, then went immediately for his jeans, saying, as she did so, "I have been trying to guess this one for _years._" Looking down, she bit her lip, shook her head, and said ruefully, "boxers! Not boxer briefs. I was so sure, too. Oh, well."

She was soft against him, and as they moved together he wondered if he'd end up bruising her. He was slow, gentle, deliberate, thorough with the way he ran his hands over her body, against her face, through her hair. He felt her trace a scar on his back with two ticklish fingers, and when he snorted out a laugh, she stopped for a moment and glanced at him, the merriment back in her eyes that he'd missed all evening, since their encounter at the front door.

When it was over, Abby curled up and let Gibbs fold her close to him and cover her with the blankets they'd kicked off the bed in the midst of distracted passion.

"I don't think," she whispered, "that this was exactly what Franks' meant when he said you should come up and apologize."

Gibbs kissed her ear. "Dunno," he whispered. "Works for me."


	6. Under Wraps

**Chapter Six – Under Wraps**

Abby woke up in the dark, in Gibbs' bed, with an empty space next to her where her boss/lover had been lying when she'd fallen asleep. This wasn't the first time that Abby had awakened to find out that last night's date had escaped out the back door, but this time she was pretty sure that Gibbs hadn't left the building. Their little tryst had been a moment's vacation, but his job wasn't done. He'd be in the basement with Franks, or maybe guarding the front door with Tony and Ziva. She'd go down and see him, find out if she could be useful. After all, this was a case, and after the release of the night before, Abby was relaxed and relieved enough to be ready to treat this like a job. The fantastic date night she'd been planning could wait, now that she felt that Gibbs' would at least be willing, when the right place and time presented themselves.

The difficulty, she quickly discovered, was that she wasn't wearing any clothes. The thick bed covers , as well as her delectable recent memories had been doing a good job of keeping her warm and cozy, but as soon as she threw them off, she felt the draft. She wasn't going downstairs in the nude, and Gibbs' t-shirt, lying on the floor next to the bed, wouldn't do either. Of course, by now, Ziva and Tony were well aware of what had gone on in the upstairs bedroom, but that didn't make it right for Abby to parade around in Gibbs' clothing. There was something possessive about that, and Abby liked the idea of being possessive of Gibbs a little too much to be comfortable with it. She'd get dressed in her own clothes before braving the stares of her friends.

Downstairs, Tony and Ziva were taking turns on the watch. When Abby got there, Tony was asleep on the couch, his gun within easy arm's reach. Ziva was over by the door, looking bored and a little sleepy. When she heard Abby's footsteps on the stairs, she turned around, and stared at Abby with her mouth partially open, obviously at a loss for an appropriate greeting. Self-consciously, Abby adjusted her skirt, and reached up to make sure the button was done on the collar of her sweater.

"Long night?" She asked, hazarding a sympathetic smile.

"Yes." Ziva kept on staring. "In forty two minutes, it will be Tony's turn, if I can wake him." She sounded a bit dubious about the chances of that.

"Ouch. No rest for the wicked. Not," added Abby, "that you're wicked. Just…wicked hot. You know." She cleared her throat. "Can I help? I've had some sleep, I can-!"

"So I see," murmured Ziva.

Abby spent a few minutes deciding whether or not to act casual. After all, Ziva probably wouldn't have much respect for her if she started acting guilty, but there was something in the former Mossad agent's face that made Abby want to make excuses. Gibbs, too, had a way of making her want to explain herself, but Ziva, at least, would accept apologies.

"I'm…" She began.

The trouble was, Abby realized, she wasn't really sorry at all. She was actually pretty pleased with herself. "I'm looking for Gibbs," she said instead.

Ziva looked surprised, and a little impressed. Apparently she hadn't expected Abby to be so bold about it. "He's in the basement," she said.

***

The basement was full of people. Franks and Leyla were still there, curled up on mats on the floor in the far corner of the room. Leyla looked as though she was fast asleep. Franks did too, but Abby wasn't buying that. Knowing that there was danger about would keep Franks on the alert. He'd been the one who had trained Gibbs to be watchful in the first place.

Gibbs was seated on his workbench, with Amira in his lap. The little girl had tearstains on her face, and her mouth was still puckered up as though she'd been crying not too long ago. As Abby watched, Gibbs rocked Amira slowly back and forth, singing to her softly enough not to wake her mother.

"Hush little baby, don't say a word, daddy's gonna buy you a mockingbird. If that mockingbird don't sing, daddy's gonna buy you a diamond ring."

Abby was aware of feeling a complicated emotion that she didn't understand, something that lay in between charmed pleasure and melancholy, as she watched him moving the now peaceful child back and forth in his arms. It was a beautiful scene, a real tearjerker, and yet there was something terribly wrong with it that she couldn't pinpoint. Maybe, she thought, it was the sound of his voice as he sang. It wasn't sad, but it wasn't happy either. It was full of something, some indescribable…thing. Ducky would know what the word was, what the psychological significance was of it all, but to Abby it was just deeply upsetting. As carefully as she could, she retraced her steps up the stairs, closing the door halfway behind her.

"Abby?" Ziva was watching her from the sofa. "Are you all right?"

"Tony'll wake up if you tickle him," Abby said. "He's _crazy_ ticklish. Goodnight, Ziva." Climbing the stairs to the upper floor, Abby crept back into Gibbs' bed, and spent the next three hours trying to fall asleep.

***

She must have fallen asleep eventually, because Abby woke up again when she felt Gibbs lips against her forehead. Opening her eyes, she got a glimpse of him bending over her on the bed, still shirtless, with pronounced dark circles under his eyes. Seeing open her eyes, he drew back from her, raising an eyebrow and giving her a little smile when he noticed she was wearing his missing t-shirt. "Hey," he said. "It's time to go."

"Go?" Abby was still a little bleary.

Gibbs nodded. "Yeah," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Just got a call from the lab. McGee's been working on the fingerprints we took off Franks' letter. Got a match to an American anti-Arab organization member working out of Mexico. Surveillance cameras at Franks' favorite cantina put him there four hours ago. He's-!"

"Wait." Slowly, gradually, Abby was beginning to process properly. "The lab? My lab? McGee is working in my lab?"

"You're here," said Gibbs. "McGee is familiar with the procedures and protocols. I needed someone to-!"

"Gibbs!" Abby was indignant. She felt hot, frustrated, more and more furious. "Gibbs, that's _my job._ I'm the forensic specialist, that's the kind of work that I do, and I do it _better_. You let McGee into my lab, to do my work, for a case involving my friends, without even telling me? Without even asking me if it's okay?"

"I had to make a quick decision, Abs, and I made it." Gibbs eyes had grown hard again, businesslike. "That's _my_ job."

"Yeah," Abby shot at him. "Yeah, I get that." Suddenly, Abby wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Being trapped here with all these people, all these supposed colleagues of hers who had been in on secrets of this case that no one had bothered to tell her, made her feel sick. She'd been betrayed, and while she'd been being betrayed and letting them act like she wasn't a part of their team, she'd been rolling around in bed with her boss. It was _wrong_, and the worst part was, she felt as though she'd just let it happen, been willing to let Gibbs work around her, in exchange for working her over.

"Great," she shot at Gibbs, grabbing her clothes up off the floor and beginning to pull them sloppily on, "tell McGee that if he needs any help, he should call somebody else. I don't care who."

"Abby." Gibbs reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but Abby shrugged him angrily off.

"No, I get it," she snapped. "Things aren't the way they were before. I can't have everything, If I want personal, I can't have professional. If I want professional, I can't have personal. Not only that, but I don't even get to decide which one I want, do I? You're the boss, you're gonna decide for me." Abby was dressed now, and Gibbs was standing in front of the door, blocking her way. She stood up, glaring at him, daring him to prevent him from getting out of the room.

Gibbs didn't want to fight. He looked for a moment as though he was going to say something, but Abby knew that there was nothing to say. As she watched, Gibbs sighed, stepped back, and made the doorway available. Abby abandoned him there, ran headlong down the stairs, past a startled looking Tony and Ziva, and out the front door.


	7. Undertaker

**Chapter Seven – Undertaker**

Abby slammed the door behind her as soon as she was out on the front step. Although still seething inside, she was already beginning to feel a little stupid about how suddenly she'd torn out of the house, and the frankly childish way she'd thrown her last words in Gibbs' face. As she paused in front of the house, wondering where to go from there, she heard the door creak open again behind her, and turned to find Gibbs striding out to meet her, a harassed expression on his face. "Abby," he began.

He didn't get any farther. From somewhere behind her, in the direction of the street, there came the crack of a gunshot. The next moment, blood was spurting from somewhere, soaking the white cuffs of Abby's sweater with red. Beside her, Gibbs grunted harshly, and then crumpled to the ground with a bleeding hole in his chest. Abby screamed.

Her scream was interrupted by four more gunshots in rapid succession, not from the street, but from the house. Panic blurred her vision, and as she tried to regain control of her focus, a desperate, menacing silence came over the scene. Gibbs was still on the pavement, gushing blood. Ziva was at his side, pressing something that looked like a piece of her shirt against the angry-looking gunshot wound. Tony, still in the doorway, was speaking frantically into his cell phone.

Mike Franks, gun in hand, walked slowly forward towards the bodies of four men, all of whom were lying prone in the street, their weapons at their feet, where they'd clattered to the ground after Franks had shot them. As Abby watched, frozen, Franks stepped around their bodies, and carefully put a bullet into each man's brain. Then, gathering up their guns, he walked back to Gibb's sickeningly still body.

"He's breathing," said Ziva, her shirt still wadded up against his wound. "Tony, the-!"

"The ambulance is on its way." Tony ran down to kneel beside Gibbs, resting one hand against a forearm that Gibbs had apparently thrown out to protect himself before he'd lost consciousness. "Hang in there, boss. Paramedics are coming. You're gonna be all right." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, more so than the unresponsive Gibbs, who seemed to be lost, for the moment, to any of their encouraging remarks.

Abby stood still and quiet, staring down at the fallen form of her recent lover. She felt Tony and Ziva's eyes on her, knew that everyone was watching, waiting for her to say or do something, but she didn't move. It wasn't the blood. She was used to blood, and not just blood, but gore, guts, disembowelment, and every other kind of nasty, disturbing thing that could happen to a person. She'd seen crime scenes that would make the world's greatest detective writers want to blow chunks. She was staring at the red mark on Gibbs' chest only because it was _his_ chest, because the blood had belonged to him, and the hands that had run through her hair and over her body the night before also belonged to him. In the back of her mind, she knew that he would have been shot the moment he left the house, whether or not she'd been there, but she was there. She was there, and for all her protestations of being a woman who could handle herself, she hadn't been able to do anything about this. She wasn't trained for this kind of assignment, and it had taken a bullet wound in the man who'd spent the last two days trying to tell her that to finally convince her.

"Abby." Tony was by her side, reaching for her arm. "Hey, Abby."

She looked up at him, and something in her face made him back up quickly.

It wasn't much longer before the ambulance arrived.

***

Doctor Donald Mallard rushed the through the doors of the hospital waiting room, looking around until he identified Mike Franks, seated alone in a chair by the far wall. As Ducky hurried over to him, Franks looked up.

"How is he?" asked Ducky.

Franks shook his head. "Not so good, not so bad. Got a punctured lung and a lot of lost blood, they're takin' him into surgery right now. Nobody's talkin', I don't know much. That nurse keeps givin' me the evil eye." He gestured over at a desk, behind which a severe looking woman was running an eye over a file that another waiting room occupant had just handed her. "Guess she can tell I'm not gonna wait out here much longer. They keep tryin' to keep me in the dark, I'm gonna go in there and see him for myself. Wanna figure out what they're doing to him in there."

Ducky patted Franks arm with one hand, before taking the vacant seat next to him. "Yes, well," he murmured, "let's not do anything foolish that might interrupt the surgical procedure. I sympathize with your desire to be privy to the recovery process, but I assure you, these people know what they're doing. Where's your daughter?"

Franks grunted. "Leyla and Amira are back at the house, Ziva and DiNozzo are watchin' them. I came here in the ambulance with my boy, I figure I got enough of those suckers to send them a message. They won't be messing with me and mine any time real soon."

"And…where is Abby?" Ducky took a quick look around the waiting room. "She didn't come with you?"

"No, she didn't," said Franks, shaking his head. "That girl looked like hell, she wasn't in any condition…told her to go home. Didn't want her to be here to see..." he swallowed, working on getting the words out. "Didn't want her to be here if things go bad."

"Yes." Ducky thought about all the things that could, as Franks so eloquently put it "go bad." Losing Gibbs had always been a very real possibility, something that Ducky had been dealing with long before he and Gibbs had even encountered the rest of the team for the first time. Waiting for a diagnosis of the living was not similar, he reflected, to waiting for a diagnosis of the dead. Operations on living patients held considerably higher stakes and for all of his medical training and his time in the field, Ducky would never get used to the possibility of a loss that could be prevented. All of his patients, by the time they reached him, were already gone. He could only hope that Gibbs wasn't.

"It's something of a war," he murmured, more to himself than to Franks. "A different kind of a war than the one you and Jethro are used to fighting. It's fighting a war against death, a war against yourself and the desire to let go. Perhaps that's why I have always felt so deeply akin to the men who fight for us overseas. As a medical man, I understand the nature of warfare."

"Yeah?" Franks wasn't really listening. Instead, he was keeping an eye on the door that led to the emergency rooms into which Gibbs had been taken.

"Do you know," continued Ducky, now lost on his own train of thought, "what the ancient Spartan women used to say to their warriors, when they sent them off to battle in foreign fields? They told them, 'come back with your shield, or on it.' Something of an odd send-off, but perhaps one that would appeal to warriors and fighters such as yourself. They were never to surrender, never to let down their defenses, even in the face of torture and death.

"So you're sayin' Probie's gonna suffer for letting down his shield for that girl," growled Franks.

Ducky eyed him severely, but not unsympathetically. "It's not her fault, you know," he said.

"Yeah." Franks sighed, leaned back, frustrated and fidgety, crossing and then uncrossing his legs in the uncomfortable chair. "Yeah, I know."

***

Abby was alone. She'd thrown her bloodstained sweater and skirt behind the dresser, where she wouldn't be able to see or retrieve them without help.

Sitting on the edge of her coffin in a dark bedroom, she put her arms around herself, closed her eyes, and rocked back and forth, trying not to cry. As she rocked, she sang shakily,

"Hush little baby, don't say a word. Daddy's gonna buy you a mockingbird…"

**Author's Note: Someday, this story arc will end, and I will go back to focusing on my real world job. That day is not today. I am starting to think that this is going to be a very long series indeed...I hope your patience hasn't given out on you, and that you're still reading and enjoying! Stay tuned for the next fic in this series, coming soon!**


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